Typology of the Bad Mother

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There has been a lot of talk lately about bad mothers. Is bad good
or is bad bad? I linked to one of the discussions on this issue in my post yesterday and the newspapers seem peppered with them the past few days too.

I think part of the problem with the whole conversation is that
there is no consistent definition of what a bad mother is. Each person
defines it differently. As someone that likes to organize or classify
things, I keep getting dizzy when reading these articles because I
don't know what they are talking about half of the time and I'm not
sure they know either.

So I started thinking about what a bad mother is. I thought about
some of the things I had read. I asked people whether they would
consider themselves bad mothers and how they would define a bad mother.
All of that with the intent of coming up with this typology of the bad
mother.

When you think about a bad mother, what do you envision?

Here are the types I have discovered so far:

• Neglectful or abusive and don't know better: Some moms have
  been dealt the wrong deck of cards in life. They may have grown up
  being abused or were neglected. That is the only type of parenting they
  know and they are just continuing the cycle. Others maybe really didn't
  want to be parents and just don't care enough to try to be a good
  parent. As an example, @mirandababy considers her mother a bad mother: "Neglectful even to this day, unresponsive, uninterested and completely disassociated". Some moms, like @AmberStrocel who blogs at Strocel
  would restrict the "bad mother" category to those that are truly
  neglecting or abusing their kids and don't care to change that.

• Kids don't come first: There are moms who admit that they
  love their husband more than their kids and will always put their
  husband's needs first. Obviously all moms need to balance the needs of
  all family members, but these moms have established a specific ranking
  order where the kids are decidedly not first. Those that put their
  husband first include Ayelet Waldman author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace and blogger Zaida Grunes (@manhattanspeaks).

• Not perfect and oblivious: There are mothers that are not perfect and don't realize that they are making poor decisions. According to @emilyjh75 "Everyone
  makes bad choices sometimes. Bad choices do not define her as a bad
  mother. Unless, IMO, she refuses to recognize them and continues in bad
  decisions." Or put another way, @nicolemarr from Grudge Mom says "bad parenting is making mistakes and not learning from them. Like repeatedly letting them fall off a couch".

• Not perfect and doing the best they can: A lot of moms
  recognize that they are not perfect, but they realize that there is
  only so much that they can do or should do. They realize, like @doudoubebe that everyone has bad days. Or they feel, like @jmegan, that they are the best parent they can be. Some might consider this synonymous with the Good Enough Mother
  concept and others would say that they while they accept what they did
  wrong today or yesterday, they are going to continue to try to be a
  better parent tomorrow.

• Not perfect and feel guilty about it: Then there are other
  mothers that know they are not perfect and feel guilty about it. For
  some, it may be debilitating guilt, enough to trigger depression or
  worse. For others, it is occasional questioning whether stumbling through is good enough or